HighOnAndroid SOT Battery Test

This page is dedicated to the HighOnAndroid SOT (Screen-On-Time) Battery Test.

What is HighOnAndroid SOT test?

This is a test that tests your Android smartphone/tablet screen-on-time.   The display is usually responsible for a majority of your power consumption so by measuring screen-on-time, you will be able to get a good idea of how long the battery will last.

Many screen-on-time reviews online are pretty much inaccurate as they don’t use controlled environment plus everyone uses their phone differently.  Unless we can actual repeat the exact same tests, screen-on-times are meaningless.

So, we created the “HighOnAndroid SOT Test” where the screen is set to middle brightness to 300 lux on light meter (new tests since Dec. 2015 use the light meter to make sure all phones have equal brightness instead of using the phone’s middle brightness) and WiFi turned on but everything else (such as GPS, bluetooth, NFC) turned off.  We test the phone on WiFi since having your phone on 4G LTE may skew the test results as 4G LTE can vary greatly on your signal and speeds.  We put the phones on airplane mode. For the test, we use the YouTube app to playback videos on 1080P continuously.  A 1080P HD YouTube video playback also allows us to test the average CPU time as it requires some HD decoding from the processor, you can consider this somewhat between heavy gaming and light web browser, in essence “an average” of things we do on the phone.  And also by streaming YouTube video, we can include internet connection, which is vital to everyday usage.  A test without internet connection is useless as that’s like testing a phone that is turned off.

Overall, these screen-on-time results will be slightly higher than real normal usage (we think) but it is definitely a great test to compare phones in a controlled environment.

If you want to do the HighOnAndroid Test on your Android device, simply put your screen brightness to 300 lux, turn off any power saving features (as we are not testing that), turn on Airplane mode, turn off everything except WiFi, and replay a YouTube playlist using the YouTube app (in 1080P HD for quality) that’s long enough to do the test (we used our HighOnAndroid Unboxing Playlist which is around 12 hours long total but you can use any of your favorite YouTube playlists).

HighOnAndroid SOT Test Results

Listed in order of highest-to-lowest SOT(Screen-On-Time)

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge (Exynos) – 11 hours 34 minutes on stock Android 6.0.1 MarshmallowSee Test [KING of SOT]

LG V30 (pre-production) – 10 hours 7 minutes on stock Android 7.1.2 Nougat – See Test

Samsung Galaxy S7(Exynos) – 9 hours 10 minutes on stock Android 6.0.1 MarshmallowSee Test

Huawei Mate 9(Kirin) – 8 hours 57 minutes – See Test

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge (Qualcomm) – 8 hours 48 minutes on stock Android 6.0.1 MarshmallowSee Test

Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus (Qualcomm) – 8 hours 47 minutes on stock Android 7.1.2 Nougat – See Test

Pixel – 8 hours 46 minutes on Android 7.1 NougatSee Test

Pixel XL – 8 hours 16 minutes on Android 7.1 NougatSee Test

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 (Qualcomm) – 8 hours 15 minutes on stock Android 7.1.2 Nougat – See Test

Samsung Galaxy S5(Qualcomm) – 6 hours 50 minutes on stock LollipopSee Test

Huawei Mate 8(Kirin) – 6 hours 50 minutes on stock Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow – See Test

Samsung Galaxy S6(Exynos) – 6 hours 42 minutes on stock Android 6.0.1 MarshmallowSee Test (Note: Marshmallow has much improved battery life over Lollipop on this device)

Samsung Galaxy Note 5 – 6 hours 38 minutes on stock Android 5.1.1 LollipopSee Test

LG G6(pre-production) – 6 hours 23 minutes on stock Android 7.0 Nougat – See Test

LG V20 – 6 hours 20 minutes on stock Android 7.0 Nougat – See Test

Huawei P9 – 6 hours 14 minutes on stock Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow – See Test

Galaxy Note 4(Qualcomm) – 6 hours 10 minutes on stock Lollipop – See Test, 6 hours 7 minutes on stock Lollipop – See Test

Galaxy Note 3(Qualcomm) – 6 hours 10 minutes on stock Lollipop – See Test

Nexus 6 – 5 hours 53 minutes on stock Android 5.1 Lollipop – See Test

OnePlus One – 5 hours 53 minutes on stock Android 5.0.2 Oxygen firmware – See Test

Nexus 6P – 5 hours 50 minutes on stock Android 6.0.1 firmwareSee Test

Nexus 6P – 5 hours 22 minutes on stock Android 7.1 firmware – See Test  (After 11 months)

Galaxy Note Edge (Exynos) – 5 hours 28 minutes on stock Android LollipopSee Test

LG G Flex 2  – 5 hours 25 minutes on stock Android Lollipop – See Test

Samsung Galaxy S6(Exynos) – 5 hours 20 minutes on stock Lollipop (with 5% battery left) – See Test

LG G3 – 5 hours 11 minutes on stock KitKatSee Test

HTC One M9 –4 hours 20 minutes on stock Android 5.0.2 Lollipop – See Test

LG V10 – 4 hours on Android 5.1.1 LollipopSee Test

35 Responses

  1. winnipegguy2236 says:

    No big deal but you made a little typo as the longest lasting is the s5. Thanks for the test. You planning on doing any of the lg phones. I’d personally like to see how they all compare to my g2 but even a g3 would be nice.

  2. mark collins says:

    Seems like cell coverage changes these results a lot. eg. Note 3 lasts half as long as OPO where I live (bad signal) CyanogenMod kernel seems to be Smarter than Samsung?

  3. LifeKommando says:

    Can you do Xperia Z Ultra for its huge screen? Please

  4. krazyking says:

    Would love to see results for the Galaxy S6 Edge. Actually a video with the Edge vs S6 SOT would be great!

  5. metalron says:

    Nice, you guys should build a more comprehensive database.

  6. yoyoyo says:

    G4 please?

  7. Yamado says:

    Sorry, “50%” isn’t controlled at all, thus your results are also meaningless. eg, 20% brightness on one phone might the same level of brightness as 60% on another. You need to put displays at the same brightness measuring lux or nits on a white background.

    • Ramollo Camollo says:

      Yamado’s got a point and also a good one: if you want to be “better” than the others out there with their inaccurate tests, you should make sure that all use the same variables as much as possible. Also, I would kinda create a weighed evalutation: a €700 phone with as much SOT as a €200 phone is either a bad €700 or a damn good €200.
      Keep up the good work nevertheless!
      p.s. if you will publish the results of our phones I will most definitely perform your test on my OnePlus X in order to increase your database (although I guess you kinda stopped updating it).

  8. Rescue says:

    There are smartphones like the Innos D6000 with 6000mAh battery. It may be interesting to see what results you obtain with those. There will also be the Oukitel K10000 with 10 000 mAh battery.

  9. Darkza says:

    Please test note 3 with resurection remix marshmallow 😉

  10. Nick Yip says:

    Totally not trustworthy.
    You should add Asus Zenfone Max, which has 5000mAh, to your tests. Remember to upgrade to Marshmallow first.

  11. Nick Yip says:

    Also, you may try to test OnePlus One on CM13 Marshmallow too.

  12. Rafael says:

    ?? I barely can have 3 hours SOT on Note 5! What magic have you done?

  13. Robert says:

    I have Oneplus 3 and get easily between 7 and 8 hours SOT usually.
    So far is the best phone I got. My previous Samsung S3 lasted just little more than 2 hours, so the time is triple now. And what performance! Fantastic!

  14. phissith says:

    S7 Edge on Beta Nougat please

    • Yosef Elgart says:

      wait for final relese because beta 1 was good then all betas after battery worse

    • Yosef Elgart says:

      ok final beta here 1 hour of 1080p video from youtube + whatsup desktop sync
      1 hour – 91% battery at 1440p normal mode after fresh install of OS
      2 hour – 82%
      3.15 hours – 70%
      4 hours – 63%
      on auto brightness with 17W led bulb in room at noon

  15. Berly Tannyono Putra says:

    Some budget Android phone like Redmi 4 Prime have almost 12 hours SOT

  16. Max Factor says:

    My S6 Active hit 5 hours with 51% and 10 hours and 20 minutes at 3% battery. I am really proud of that.

  17. nezar says:

    could you please do a test for mate 9 pro I’m willing to see how strong the battery

  18. Robin says:

    I think it would make more sense to use a video file that resides on the device and specific media player version set on repeat. With the way they were tested, it’s entirely possible that a network issue could skew the results. Also the results would depend on resolution, I would think. I could be wrong. I’m just sour because the phone I just bought scores very low on this test! lol

  19. yosef019 says:

    when you post S8 and S8+ lg g6 all new phones SOT?

  20. Pit says:

    can you do this test on S8 (and S8+ if you want) plzzz 🙂

  21. yarcan says:

    Hi I have bought this 17 day phone but still OEM LOCK is not active developer options open but do not look why?

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